Weaponized Truth: How the GOP’s Loyalty to Trump Undermines U.S. Intelligence

The CIA, the FBI, and the Dangerous Price of Political Loyalty

  

     It’s no secret that America’s trust in its intelligence agencies has taken a serious beating—and not without cause. The FBI and CIA were once viewed as neutral sentinels, keeping threats at bay while staying out of politics. But those days are gone.

     The deeper truth now is that both institutions have been repeatedly dragged into the political arena, weaponized by elected officials on both sides to score points, spin narratives, and undercut opponents. And while that damage hasn’t come from one party alone, the Trump administration took things to a whole new level—openly waging war against the intelligence community and installing loyalists with little experience or credibility to lead these critical agencies. When national security becomes a tool of political revenge, the real danger isn't just corruption—it's collapse.

     Trump never hid his contempt for the CIA or the FBI. He called the intelligence community “Nazis” before taking office, dismissed their assessments about Russian interference in the 2016 election, and repeatedly undermined their work in public. But the bigger problem wasn’t just the tweets. It was who he put in charge. Time and again, Trump prioritized personal loyalty over competence, placing people at the helm who had no business leading institutions as complex and vital as the CIA or FBI.

     In some cases, their only qualification seemed to be their willingness to parrot Trump’s talking points and protect him politically. When the CIA director is more interested in defending the President than assessing global threats, or when the Attorney General uses DOJ resources to settle political scores, the entire intelligence framework tilts off its axis.

     Yes, both parties have played political games with intelligence. That’s not new. Administrations come and go, and with them, agendas shift. But Trump’s approach wasn’t about influencing priorities—it was about domination. He viewed the FBI and CIA not as independent entities with a mandate to protect the country, but as enemies if they didn't serve his personal interests. When FBI Director Christopher Wray didn’t act as a political shield, Trump publicly attacked him. When intelligence assessments didn’t match Trump’s talking points, they were dismissed or buried. This kind of behavior doesn’t just hurt morale inside the agencies—it corrodes the public’s belief in them entirely. Read: How Trump Could Harm U.S. Intelligence: A Dangerous Game with National Security.

     And once that trust is gone, bad actors thrive. Take the FBI’s role in the 2016 election. The investigation into Russian interference and the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion consumed the headlines. Critics on the right accused the FBI of launching a partisan witch hunt, while others said the Bureau didn’t go far enough. The Steele dossier became a lightning rod—dismissed early on as unverified, but in the years since, much of it has held up. The central claim—that Russian operatives sought to infiltrate and influence U.S. politics—has been broadly validated.

     Still, the dossier’s use in securing FISA surveillance on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page raised legitimate questions. It was another instance where intelligence tools meant to safeguard the nation got dragged into a political knife fight. And the fallout hasn’t stopped.

     Then there’s the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop story—a textbook case in how truth can be buried under a landslide of narrative warfare. The FBI had the laptop in its possession as early as 2019, after a Delaware computer repair shop owner turned it over. But when the story broke during the election, social media platforms throttled it, citing disinformation concerns.

     Then came the open letter from more than 50 former intelligence officials, claiming the laptop story bore “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation”—despite having no concrete evidence to back that up. The FBI, for its part, didn’t clarify or confirm anything, leaving a cloud of confusion just weeks before voters hit the polls. Months later, major outlets confirmed the laptop was real. But the damage was done. Another round of chaos. Another blow to credibility.

     That’s the heart of what drives the spy thriller Shadow War, where CIA spymaster Corey Pearson and his elite team are racing to stop a former KGB spy operating a Russian sleeper cell network across the U.S. The mission isn’t just to stop an attack—it’s to protect the country from an inside job. In the novel, the Russian network’s goal is to sow enough internal discord to flip an election and install a corrupt senator who falsely claims the current President has weaponized the FBI and CIA to target his enemies. It’s fiction, but it’s disturbingly familiar. The lines between disinformation and domestic politics are blurring in ways we’ve never seen.

     What makes this so dangerous isn’t just the manipulation of facts—it’s the hollowing out of institutions we rely on to tell us the truth. If the FBI says something and half the country assumes it’s political spin, its authority vanishes. If the CIA warns about a national threat and it's dismissed as partisan noise, the threat gets through. That’s the real playbook for America's adversaries—divide us, confuse us, weaken us from within. And that’s exactly what the villain in Shadow War exploits, using America’s fractured information landscape to carry out a devastating plan.

     We’re not just talking about spy games and election meddling. This is about the long-term health of a democratic society. When intelligence agencies are politicized—when their leaders are chosen for loyalty, not expertise—we don’t just lose good governance. We lose our ability to respond to actual threats. Field agents become political scapegoats. National priorities get twisted. And the public, left in a fog of spin and contradiction, tunes out entirely.

     You’d hope Congress would step up and defend the integrity of these agencies. But that hope keeps running into a brick wall—mainly because the Trump administration’s stranglehold on the GOP has turned much of Congress into a loyalty test. Instead of standing up for the CIA and FBI as vital, apolitical institutions, many Republican lawmakers fall in line with Trump’s attacks, fearing backlash or primary challenges if they don’t.

     The result? A Congress too compromised to act. And while both parties have played politics with intelligence in the past, the current silence from GOP lawmakers isn’t just political cowardice—it’s submission to a figure who’s made undermining these agencies part of his brand.

     That’s why stories like Shadow War hit so hard right now. At its core, the book isn’t just about covert missions or foreign plots. It’s about truth—how fragile it is, how easy it is to twist, and how dangerous things become when we can’t tell fact from fiction. Pearson’s real fight isn’t just against foreign agents. It’s against the lies that blind us to what’s really going on.

     Here’s the hard truth: our intelligence agencies are only as strong as our trust in them. And that trust is on life support. If we keep politicizing the truth, spinning every fact to fit a narrative, and letting incompetent loyalists run the show, we won’t need foreign adversaries to take us down. We’ll do it ourselves.

     And if you want a chilling preview of how that collapse could unfold, Shadow War shows you what’s waiting on the other side.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His work offers readers an insider’s glimpse into the world of espionage, inspired by the complexities and high-stakes realities of the intelligence community.